This Mom Allegedly Locked Her Child In a Closet for 3 Years Before He Died

The Los Angeles Timesreports on the heartbreaking death of 11-year-old Yonatan Daniel Aguilar, who authorities say was locked in a closet for three years by his mother, Veronica Aguilar, and sedated with liquid sleeping aids before he was found dead in August.

Aguilar’s three other children — two of whom slept just outside the closet Yonatan was kept in — knew the boy’s whereabouts, but claimed they were sworn to secrecy by their mother. (Yonatan’s third sibling, an older brother, initially told police he was not aware of Yonatan’s whereabouts but later confessed to knowing he’d been kept in closets at multiple homes the family lived in. He added that Yonatan was "a troublemaker.") When friends and family asked Aguilar what had happened to her son, who the Times reports was autistic, she claimed he was placed in an institute in Mexico, according to court records.

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Yonatan was so well-hidden that his own stepfather, Jose Pinzon, wasn’t aware Yonatan was still in their Echo Park, Los Angeles, home. Pinzon believed Aguilar’s claims that the boy was in Mexico.

Yonatan Daniel Aguilar is seen in a collection of family photos shown at his memorial on Sept. 14, 2016, in Echo Park, Los Angeles.

KTLA

But this past August, Aguilar told Pinzon that Yonatan had died. She then led him to the bedroom closet where Yonatan had been kept, wrapped in blanket. He was 34 pounds, nearly bald, and covered in pressure sores from lying on the tile floor. After LA police were called, they staged an intervention of sorts between Pinzon and Aguilar’s other children, the Times adds:

Moses Castillo, the supervising LAPD detective on the case, placed Pinzon and Yonatan’s siblings together in a room “to see the reaction,” Department of Children and Family Services records state. As detectives and a county social worker stood by, Pinzon “immediately confronts the children that he had no idea that minor [Yonatan] was living in the house the whole time they were there,” records state.

“How can you do this to me?” he asked.

One of the children replied: “You were always at work, so you didn’t know.”

Pinzon then started crying.

“I carry a photo of him in my wallet,” he said, according to the records. “I’m the only one that cared for him.”

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Aguilar, 39, has pled not guilty to murder charges. The Los Angeles County’s Juvenile Court has ordered the release of more than 160 pages of Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) records to “shed light on what was going on in the family’s home” and explain why Yonatan was left in his mother’s care despite six prior reports to DCFS alleging abuse and neglect.